Texas Rangers Blog

3 Up/3 Down: Is there a better word than “up” for Josh Hamilton?

If you were going to describe Josh Hamilton’s week, “hot” probably wouldn’t cover it. “Scalding” doesn’t quite get there. And even “radioactive” seems to be a bit short. “Surface of the sun” might be the best way to go. Here’s a look at how hot Hamilton was during the week, along with some other things that were up or down for the Rangers:

UP
• OF Josh Hamilton: These are the stats that will be quoted when Hamilton is named AL Player of the Week: A .467 batting average (14-for-30), nine home runs and 18 RBIs in seven games. It will certainly be mentioned that he tied the major league record for homers in a game with four on Tuesday and that set an AL record for total bases (18) in that same game. It probably won’t be mentioned that he had more homers in the week than all but eight other players in the majors have hit for the year. It won’t be mentioned that if you turned this into home run derby and counted all his hits other than homers as outs, he’d still have hit .300 on home runs alone. And it won’t be mentioned that his slugging percentage for the week (1.433) was higher than the OPS (slugging plus on-base-percentage) of all but one player in the AL. That’s a week.

• OF Nelson Cruz: Actually, there was one category in which Hamilton didn’t lead the Rangers last week: Batting average. The return of Adrian Beltre to the lineup seemed to have a real impact on Cruz, who broke from a long slump with 14 hits in 28 at-bats (.500) to edge Hamilton. His grand slam on Sunday broke a 92 at-bat homerless drought for him. Cruz’s 1.313 OPS for the week was fifth among AL hitters with at least 20 plate appearances.

• Crowds: The Rangers extended their sellout streak to nine with three crowds that averaged 47,523 for the weekend. But they weren’t just big crowds, they were loud and they were loyal. It started with lots of “YU” chants on Friday and included the very original and creative “We we want CJ” chants late in Friday’s game. This was after a two-hour rain delay during which hardly anybody left. The crowd gave Josh Hamilton a spontaneous standing O when he went to the field after homering in Friday’s game, chanted “MVP” for him and chanted for Mike Napoli. It prompted Orel Hershiser to say on ESPN’s broadcast that Rangers Ballpark is getting to be a place where teams “just want to survive.” The Rangers are now on pace for over 3.5 million fans. The big test comes this week though with “unsexy” matchups against Kansas City Monday-Tuesday and Oakland on Wednesday-Thursday.
DOWN
• DH-INF Michael Young: He had two hits and a homer in the first game of the week at Baltimore, but over the final six games he was 4-for-27 (.148) with just one RBI. Young’s average fell from .315 to .289 over the course of the week.

• LHP Robbie Ross’ fashion sense: When he got up to warm up in the second game of Thursday’s doubleheader, Ross pulled off his sweatshirt and realized he was still wearing the gray jersey from Game 1 while all his teammates had switched to blue. Ross is having a fine season, but he will never, ever, ever, live that down.

• RHP Mark Lowe: Brought in with an eight-run lead in the seventh of Sunday’s game, Lowe could not finish his inning and forced the Rangers to go to RHP Koji Uehara earlier than they would have liked. Lowe allowed five hits, including a homer, a walk and three runs. When the Rangers went to Uehara, the bases were loaded and the Angels and Howie Kendrick had a chance to make it a one-run game. Uehara, however, got him to ground out. In addition, Lowe’s pitch total (28) makes him a limited option for Monday when the Rangers have reliever Scott Feldman making a spot start. That’s a night in which the club needs all hands on deck.